Methods for filling bottles or other containers are known in various embodiments. What is often a disadvantage is that during or after the filling, the product foams. Sometimes the foam overflows the container. This leads to product loss and contamination of both the container and the filling machine.
This undesired foaming has different causes. It can happen, for example, as a result of turbuence. In the case of pressure filling, foaming can occur upon relieving the pressure in the container to a lower pressure, or upon pulling the container off the filling element.
Foaming can also result from the type of product. In a CO2 containing product that is introduced into the containers under pressure, undesired foam formation is caused after completion of the filling and during the relief of the filled containers to atmospheric pressure by the CO2 gas bound in the product or also by unbound CO2 gas exiting during relief, particularly when an exceedingly long killing and relief phase is not desired after completion of the filling in order to increase the performance of a filling machine (number of filled containers per unit of time).
Even when containers are filled under normal pressure or by a free jet filling method where the containers and their container openings are spaced apart from the filling element and the product thus flows into the containers in a free jet, for example when bottling still beverages or juice beverages, undesired foaming may often occur due to a property of the product, for example due to pulp or fruit fibers and/or to gas bubbles adhering to them, the gas bubbles having been introduced into the product.